Avengers (Earth-199999)
| Status = Active | Identity = Public | Alignment = Good | Universe = Earth-199999 | BaseOfOperations = Avengers Facility, New York; formerly Stark Tower, S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier | TeamLeaders = Captain America; formerly Nick Fury | CurrentMembers = Black Widow, Falcon, Scarlet Witch, Vision, War Machine | FormerMembers = Hawkeye, Hulk, Iron Man, Quicksilver, Thor | Allies = S.H.I.E.L.D., Nick Fury, Phil Coulson | Enemies = Loki, Chitauri, Hydra, Ultron | Origin = Assembled by S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nick Fury to defend against threats that no single hero could fight alone. | PlaceOfFormation = S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier | PlaceOfDefunction = | Creators = Zak Penn; Joss Whedon | First = | Last = | HistoryText = Avengers Initiative The Avengers were the brainchild of S.H.I.E.L.D. Director Nicholas Fury, who envisioned a team of heroes that might work together as an emergency response team in the event that a threat would prove so powerful, that no one hero could face it alone. The catalysts for this plan were the appearances of beings with personal levels of power that vastly exceeded conventional military capabilities. He named his plan the "Avengers Initiative". The Avengers formed gradually through circumstance and reactive planning. Fury initially considered Tony Stark for a role on the team, but discarded this idea due to Stark's unpredictable nature. The World Security Council attempted to arrange for Emil Blonsky to be assigned to the Initiative due to his military record after his transformation, intending to blame his initial rampage on the Hulk, but S.H.I.E.L.D. deliberately sabotaged the attempt to have Blonsky transferred to their custody and he remained in the hands of General Ross. Eventually the plan was scrapped altogether and Fury refocused his attention on military assets in the hands of S.H.I.E.L.D. instead. Circumstance however, proved to be the guiding force that brought the disparate membership of the team together when Loki made a surprise appearance at a S.H.I.E.L.D. research facility, killed a number of soldiers, and escaped with Agent Barton and Professor Selvig under his control, taking the Tesseract with him. Assembling the Avengers The threat posed by the Tesseract in the hands of Loki forced Fury to reprise his earlier idea and activate a group of people with incredible capabilities. Fury called the time-displaced World War II hero, Captain America back into service, while Stark and Dr. Bruce Banner were brought in for their scientific expertise. When Loki made a public appearance, Stark (with his Iron Man armor) and Captain America rushed to intercept, accompanied by S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, Natasha Romanoff, the Black Widow. The three of them confronted and captured the Asgardian, although in the effort to bring him into custody they were in turn confronted by Loki's adoptive brother, Thor. This resulted in an altercation when Thor extracted Loki, but once the men had wasted time and effort in a fruitless clash of egos, they resumed the trip together. Once on board the S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier, the clashes continued, to some extent as a result of Loki's goading. Even though their agendas were largely aligned, their egos and the growing unease surrounding Fury's actions had the group in a frequent state of tension. This persisted until Loki sprang his trap and used a surprise attack from Clinton Barton, still under control, to trigger a new round of falling out within the ranks. The attack left parts of the Helicarrier in ruin, and S.H.I.E.L.D. agent Phil Coulson dead by Loki's hand before Loki himself fled. His killing of Coulson, proved to be his undoing however, because Director Fury used the incident to motivate the remaining people into action. Captain America and Iron Man wanted justice for Coulson; Barton, who had been pulled from Loki's control, simply wanted to put him down; and Romanoff had her own debts to settle. After chasing Loki to New York City they were soon joined by Thor and Banner, both of whom had fallen from the carrier in the attack. Finally, together as a team, the group calling themselves the Avengers assembled to fight off a threat that was larger than any one of them alone. Battle of New York The hunt for Loki became a battle for New York when Loki opened a dimensional rift above the city to a waiting Chitauri invasion forced stationed on the other side. The Chitauri attacked without hesitation, pouring through in a vast horde of ground troops with air support. The Avengers stood fast against the assault, at first confronting the attacking warriors, and then shifting focus to other prominent target objectives. Not only was there Loki and his alien army to contend with, there were also the Chitauri's leviathans, colossal flying beasts that were as much agents of destruction as they were a mode of transportation. The Avengers were split even further on more fronts dealing with the rift and the technology holding it open, not to mention a nuclear warhead that had also been deployed to the area at the behest of Earth's governments. They ultimately triumphed when Iron Man redirected the missile through the portal and into the ranks of even more invaders waiting beyond. Black Widow subsequently deactivated the portal so that the nuclear explosion was contained in the Chitauri realm, the destruction of their core ship deactivating the cybernetic Chitauri. In the aftermath of the fight, the Avengers gathered for the departure of Thor, and his now-captive brother, back to Asgard where Loki and the Tesseract would be safely removed from humanity. When the Asgardians had gone, the remainder of the team said their good-byes and went their separate ways as well. Fury, musing on their dissolution, observed that some day the Avengers might again reassemble, confident that they would come back when needed because they would be needed. Hunting the Sceptre After the fall of S.H.I.E.L.D. the sceptre fell into the hands of Hydra . The threat it posed drew the Avengers back together in a desperate worldwide hunt. After many months they tracked it to a Hydra research facility in Sokovia and launched an all out assault to recover it. The Avengers also noted that they were being harassed by two "enhanced" during the operation, but together with Stark's Iron Legion the team soon overthrew the Hydra soldiers and reclaimed the sceptre. Stark appealed to Thor to have two days to study the alien device before it was relocated to Asgard, which Thor agreed to, and then the team unanimously agreed to celebrate their victory. Back in New York, Stark began to unravel the mysteries of the sceptre. He discovered that its core held something akin to a powerful computer and deduced that Hydra had been trying to use it to create artificial intelligence. With this knowledge he had the epiphany that he might be able to provide real adaptive thought to his Iron Legion in what he called his Ultron Program. He then left J.A.R.V.I.S. to continue investigating while he rejoined his team for a night of celebration. Ultron The party was huge and the Avengers gathered many of their friends for the night. When the revelry had died down, and most of the guests had left, the remaining men took turns trying to lift Mjolnir. This activity was interrupted by the appearance of a wrecked Iron Legion robot. It quickly became apparent that this was being operated by a rogue artificial intelligence, and the name it claimed for itself was Ultron. Ultron, and a number of other Iron Legion robots, then attacked the small group. They rallied and beat it back, but not before one of the Iron Legion made off with the sceptre during the confusion. Thor promptly turned on Stark demanding to know why he had created such a thing, to which Stark pointed out that they needed a way to deal with threats on the scale of the Chitauri. The Avengers traced Ultron's movements to a salvage yard on the coast of Africa where Ulysses Klaue dealt in the lucrative end of black market trading. So began a three way battle between Klaue's men (after Ultron severed his arm), the Avengers, and a new generation of drone robots. Ultron also had the advantage of the pair of enhanced that the Avengers had encountered in Sokovia: the siblings Wanda and Pietro Maximoff. Pietro's speed allowed him to devastate the ranks of Klaue's men, while Wanda ravaged the minds of the Avengers themselves. When she at last reached Banner, her illusions caused him to fly into a rage that he then directed towards the populace of Johannesburg, and then she Ultron and Pietro made their escape. With most of the Avengers out of action fighting their own inner demons, Stark was left to attend to the problem of a rampaging Hulk on his own. He summoned Veronica, a modular system comprised of an orbital drop pod that could deploy numerous pieces of heavy duty Iron Man outer armor. This Hulkbuster Armor afforded him the physical power to subdue the Hulk, but the public relations damage had been done, leaving Banner in a morose state. Clint Barton took the group to a safehouse to recover, soon revealing that it was actually his family home. There they met Nick Fury, who began reorienting their thinking and fomenting new strategic considerations within the shattered ranks. Banner and Romanoff had both been psychologically scarred by their encounter with the Maximoff girl and contemplated simply leaving. Tensions ran high between Stark and Rogers, and Thor had been given a glimpse of something very troubling and departed the group to investigate further. Ultron's plan to use the sceptre to create a final evolutionarily pure form for himself had become clear, and the last piece of that puzzle was with Dr. Helen Cho in South Korea. They raced for Seoul, and found Ultron deep into an attempt to load his consciousness into a new android body. Their interference forced Ultron to flee, but the group managed to separate the android body from the robot before he escaped again, and Stark, and Barton, took it back to New York. Rogers on the other hand, found himself joined by the Maximoff twins on the street of Seoul after Wanda had discovered Ultron's true intent. Romanoff had not been so lucky, and having been rendered unconscious in the confrontation soon found herself imprisoned by Ultron in Sokovia. The Vision Once they were back in New York, Stark and Banner bickered over the android body. Stark wanted to load J.A.R.V.I.S. into it, but Banner didn't trust his judgement. The dispute continued until it was interrupted by the arrival of Rogers and the Maximoff twins, whereupon Pietro ended it by simply unplugging the entire system. Then Thor made a surprise appearance and promptly bathed the android in lightning. It awoke in the surge and cast him aside. The Avengers and the Maximoff twins all moved to counter the android but halted when it stopped by a window to gaze out upon the city. It quickly became apparent that the android was no threat, especially fostering trust in Thor when it hefted Mjolnir with ease. The assembled group then compared stories, and Thor reported news of his vision that the energy core of the sceptre had actually contained the Mind Gem, an item of incredible power and one of the legendary Infinity Gems. That gem was now resting in the forehead of the android, which soon began referring to itself as the Vision. The Avengers and their three allies turned their attention back to Ultron and Sokovia. Banner went alone to extract Romanoff from her prison, and the others faced off against Ultron. While Ultron's plan to divide and exterminate the Avengers had failed, its plans for the human race were about to be fully revealed. Devices planted within the city engaged, drawing a sizeable portion of it into the sky. The assembled heroes, with Banner and Romanoff back amongst them, fought back against the amassed ranks of Ultron's robot legion. James Rhodes, suited up as War Machine, and a recently repaired helicarrier with him, also eventually joined the battle. After clearing most of the Ultron robots from the city now risen above the cloud layer, the heroes began evacuating the trapped populace in personnel transports sent from the helicarrier. Barton was caught under the guns of the Avengers' own quinjet however, with Ultron at the controls, and only the intervention of Pietro saved him. Pietro had saved both Barton and a boy with this final act, but at the cost of his own life when the quinjet's gunfire tore through his chest. The Vision finally confronted Ultron alone after the Hulk had flung the robot from the quinjet. Heavily damaged, Ultron was no match for the android, and fell to the Vision's power. With Ultron's defeat, the group began an inevitable dissolution. The Hulk switched off the quinjet's communications, leaving it to fly him clear of the scene. Thor and Stark each had their own agendas to pursue, with Thor needing to investigate the matter of yet another Infinity Stone coming within reach. Barton meanwhile had a new baby to attend to and left to return to the side of his wife. Despite their losses, the Avengers were also to be born anew. Steve Rogers and Natasha Romanoff proceeded to a new Avengers facility in New York, and welcomed a new quartet to the fold. They were joined by the Vision, Wanda Maximoff, War Machine, and Steve's recent companion, the Falcon. | Equipment = *S.H.I.E.L.D. issue communications equipment | Transportation = *S.H.I.E.L.D. Helicarrier *Quinjet *S.H.I.E.L.D. edition Acura TL | Weapons = | Notes = Although he was not an official member of the team, Nick Fury has stated that he considered Phil Coulson an Avenger, justifying his decision to resurrect Coulson after the Battle of New York with an experimental serum that Coulson believed should have been reserved for an Avenger. | Trivia = | Links = }} es:Los Vengadores (Tierra-199999) Category:Earth-199999 Organizations Category:S.H.I.E.L.D. Projects